Rex Gilroy, Australia's noted 'Yowie Man', field naturalist and historical researcher, is planning yet another search in the mountain country for more evidence of the 'Taree Bigfoot', who has been leaving his/her 40cm long footprints in forest soil since before European settlement.
He will be accompanied by his wife and fellow researcher, Heather, who has shared 41 years of marriage with him searching for yowies and mystery animals in the Australian bush.
Rex the 'Yowie Man' is currently celebrating 56 years of Yowie (ie relict hominin) research. He will soon publish a book on the anatomy and physiology of relict hominins and is writing his life story. As he approaches 70 he has no intention of retiring.
"I believe we are closing in on the Yowie. 'His' identity is now known and lately we have shown these hominins to be the 'father' of America's 'Bigfoot'," says Rex.
He points out that the early Aborigines confused three races under the composite name 'Yowie' or "hairy man."
"One race of primitive creatures was an' apeish-looking' form of Australian Australopithecine, now called Australopithecus australis.
"We possess three skull-types dating back 2 million years of this species, found at Katoomba, Bega and near Bathurst. Like their African cousins these beings were herbivorous feeders and did not make tools whereas the other two races are between 1.6m and 3.66m in height and identified as Homo erectus.
"We have found skull-types of Homo erectus around Australia over the last 40 years. The Aborigines called them 'hairy people' because they made marsupial hide garments, stone tools, and also fire by friction," said Rex.
The Gilroys have demonstrated that the earliest fossils of these three 'Yowie races' pre-date those of Indonesia and mainland Asia, and that a comparative study of Yowie footprint casts with those of other relict hominins of Indonesia, Malaysia, India, China and Russia compare with America's 'Bigfoot'.
"The evidence is that the giant form of Homo erectus and his smaller form migrated beyond Australia over the former Ice-Age land-bridge into the Americas, the giant form in particular spreading throughout the Americas to become known to the later-arriving Amerindians as 'Sasquatch' or Bigfoot. This means that America's 'Bigfoot' has Aussie genes,'' says Rex.
In August 2009 the Gilroys investigated the Mount George roadside night-time sighting of a male Yowie by local residents Faye Burke and Alana Garnett. Rex was able to cast an indistinct roadside footprint left by the hominin. It was 40cm long which is an average length for the smaller form of Homo erectus Yowie.
"Male and female Yowies have been reported seen in the Wingham area in particular for over the past 100 years and they are still 'out there'" concluded Rex.
